The field of application of the invention lies, in particular, in the sport and leisure area where dirty roller bearings, which are integrated into sport and leisure equipment, such as skateboards and/or inline skates, are to be washed and cleaned on the spot by the sports or equipment manager or also by the support point leader with the help of this apparatus without great effort.
The inventive apparatus can also be used in the service sector of workshops or service support points.
Apparatuses and methods for washing and cleaning as well as preserving of roller bearings are known.
For example, in the DD 2 20 876, conveying equipment is described, especially for roller bearings for passing through washing and preserving equipment and, in the DE 33 01 968, a method is described with an apparatus for effectively washing roller bearings. In the U.S. Pat. No. 3,868,958, an apparatus is described for washing and cleaning roller bearings, which lie on a grating and are sprayed with cleaning fluid.
The disadvantage of these solutions consists therein that they are tied exclusively into the manufacturing lines for producing roller bearings and are intended for cleaning and preserving newly produced roller bearings.
A further disadvantage consists therein that, during the washing and cleaning processes, the roller bearings are moved only in the specified direction of rotation (left or right).
In the DE 197 280 46, a manual apparatus for cleaning dirty roller bearings is described.
The disadvantage of this apparatus consists therein that it is possible to accommodate the roller bearings, which are to be cleaned only next to one another and, as a result, the size is determined by the number of accommodating mandrels. In practice, this means that the apparatus almost exclusively has larger dimensions and thus is less suitable for portable use.
It is an object of the invention to provide a convenient apparatus which, because of its dimensions and weight, can easily be transported, for washing and cleaning roller bearings and which permits several roller bearings of the same type and size, which have already been used, to be freed without great effort from dirt, such as sand, dust, oil, moisture and no longer usable lubricants.
At the same time, it shall be possible to change the direction of rotation of the roller bearings during the cleaning process.
Pursuant to the invention, this objective is accomplished owing to the fact that the dirty roller bearings, after they are dismantled from the sport and leisure equipment, are slipped one above the other onto accommodating axes and fastened. Several such accommodating axes are disposed circularly on a circular head plate.
The head plate and cleaning fluid are placed in an also circular container, having a volumetric capacity of about 350 ml. The driving shaft is caused to rotate by means of the external hand wheel and the dirt particles or contaminations are removed from the roller bearings by the forced rotation of the dirty roller bearings in the cleaning fluid and passed centrifugally to the end wall of the container and deposited there.
By manually changing the direction of rotation of the hand wheel of the driving shaft repeatedly, the washing and cleaning effect is increased significantly.
The special advantages of the inventive apparatus consist therein that, because of their small size and low weight, as well as the manually operated construction, it is portable and can be used everywhere. At the same time, several, for example, 20 roller bearings simultaneously can be moved in the cleaning fluid in both directions and cleaned.
The invention is described in greater detail by means of the example, shown in the drawing, in which.